Results from the City of Whitehorse's economic development charette* are in and they are big on generalities, but light on specifics.

"The staff and elected officials of the (city), along with 43 invited guests participated in a workshop facilitated by Gordon McIntosh of the Local Government Leadership Institute to determine success indicators to monitor economic development efforts and establish strategic priorities for for attention by the city,” reads the charette's overview preamble.

The following are a series of "topics/desired outcomes” with their corresponding "actions” to be taken by the city:

• reduce red tape – review current system

• public amenities – identify list of amenities

• accessible housing stock – incorporate official community planning (OCP)

• integrated branding – evaluation of existing branding (tourism)

• cold climate centre – develop promotional DVD (tourism)

What will follow from the results of the latest charette, according to Mayor Bev Buckway, is an Economic Development Strategy.

A key part to any municipality's economic strategy is ensuring a vibrant downtown, and the charette addresses the following "strategic topics” to; provide (more or upgraded) downtown public amenities, beautify the downtown and encourage a higher density downtown.

With a dearth of downtown residential lots, a burgeoning graffiti problem matched with a desire to promote and sustain economic development, particularly in the downtown core, the Star asked City of Whitehorse's administration director Robert Fendrick what the city was doing to increase downtown residents and to help fill empty commercial space.

The Star

What are you doing to get more people to move downtown?

Robert Fendrick, director of administration services, City of Whitehorse:

"one of the things would be to provide different areas of zoning for residential and nonresidential in the downtown area and that's in the official community planning process. In the last zoning amendment, to allow more a mixed use for businesses in town so they're more flexible and there's greater ability for new businesses to move in and that was in northern part of Whitehorse.”

The Star

Mixed use meaning you run your business out of your home?

Fendrick:

"Mixed use could be different types of light industrial, commercial and service industries and offers a greater variety of businesses that could move in. But also on the waterfront, we also looked at mixed use ... the zoning there allows for commercial on the ground floor and residential on the upper floors so we'd also consider that commercial-residential mixed use.”

The Star

What about taxes, business taxes. Will there be lower business taxes, or give people more for their dollar?

Fendrick:

"When we look at taxes, essentially one of the components that we look at is how much does the business pay, vis-à-vis the residential taxpayer? In Whitehorse the percentage is quite low compared to any other juridisctions we looked at, so it makes if very attractive for businesses to jump in from that point of view.”

The Star

What about hiking taxes for people who maintain empty businesses, empty space? If they're not moving to doing anything with that space, why not jack up their taxes?

Fendrick:

"I think the city prefers to look at an incentive-type program, rather than penalty-type program, so we're not looking at taxes to solve that issue.”

The Star

So what's the incentive to get people to fill those spaces? That's one of the issues that's been brought up today and what's driving, perhaps, graffiti and that sort of thing.

Fendrick:

"That's a good issue and it's a good question, but you've got to realize too that these properties are privately owned, so the owner does have the flexibility to do and sell and develop pat their options. So, for example, some of the larger buildings that we're talking about here, the owners have their own mandate as to who they want to sell to and how they want to develop, and really, that's what's driving that. In terms of newer areas, what we'd like to try and do is make it attractive for new businesses to move in and what the city has done has developed the entire waterfront; property that the city owns. And now we've seen Kwanlin Dun (First Nation) has their sod turning event this week and we see that as a big catalyst to the waterfront. And we believe that by providing that business, mixed-use, commercial, residential space on the waterfront that we are moving towards creating the symbiosis that we need to bring in that new business and make it attractive for new businesses.”

What exactly is a charette?

*The term "charette” evolved from a pre-1900 exercise at the École des Beaux Arts in France. Architectural students were given a design problem to solve within an allotted time. When that time was up, the students would rush their drawings from the studio to the school in a cart called a charrette.

Students often jumped in the cart to finish the drawings on the way. The term evolved to refer to the intense design exercise itself. Today, it refers to a creative process similar to visual brainstorming that is used by design professionals to develop solutions to a design problem within a limited timeframe.

• Courtesy of Martin Aurand, Architecture Librarian and Archivist at the Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA